UCL Fantasy Matchday 8: Tips, Captain, Picks & Team (R16 2nd Leg)

Replays of the round of 16 replays in the Fantasy Champions League are here. Without further ado, let’s jump to our UCL Fantasy Matchday 8 (R16 2nd Leg) Tips, with our strategy, odds, best picks, captain, transfer targets, team selection and more.

Fixtures are the same as in Matchday 7, so if you set your team correctly with your unlimited transfers before the 1^st leg of R16, you should have a solid fantasy squad for the 2^nd leg, as well.

However, there are some important things we have to mention.

1. Fantasy Champions League Matchday 8 Tips & Strategy

a) Have patience on Matchday 8.

Do NOT chase the points from the 1^st leg.

I mean, if some player did very well in the first leg and you did not own him, do not tear your team apart to bring him in for some player who did not do well in the first leg.

This time, it could be just the opposite and the player who did extremely well in the 1^st leg of R16 can easily blank in the 2^nd leg, and the player who blanked in the 1^st leg can easily haul in the 2^nd leg.

When you were picking your squad with unlimited transfers before the 1^st leg, you had faith in your players.

Fixtures are the same in Matchday 8, so keep your faith in players you have picked before, and keep faith in your decision-making process.

b) Use all your free transfers, as you cannot carry forward any free transfer in the knock out stage

In the Champions League knockout stage, we can’t carry out free transfers to the next round, so do not forget to use all three of them.

So, plan ahead.

Transfer out players who probably will not make it to the quarterfinals and bring in players who probably will.

We used our Odds to probability calculator to calculate the probability of progressing to the quarterfinals for each team. Feel free to use them when deciding about your transfer.

You can find our odds of advancing to the Quarterfinals in the article: Probabilities of progressing to quarterfinals.

c) Have a captain for each day

Just as in Matchday 7, aim to have four good captaincy options for the Round of 16 2nd Leg – one for each playing day. More about captaincy later in the article.

2. Fixtures to target in UCL Fantasy Round of 16 2nd Leg – Matchday 8

Which fixtures you should target? We always use bookies’ odds to help us determine that. Let’s look at which teams have the highest chance of winning their match in the R16 2nd leg and scoring a lot of goals in that game:

• Manchester City vs FC Copenhagen: Citizens 85 % to win, 59 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Bayern vs Lazio: Bayern 79 % to win, 40 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Arsenal vs FC Porto: The Gunners 78 % to win, 41 % to score 2.5+ goals
• Real Madrid vs. Leipzig: Real Madrid 65 % to win, 39 % to score 2.5+ goals

Find 2.5+ goals odds for all teams in our article: Champions League Over 2.5 Goals Odds.

6. Best captain picks for UCL Fantasy R16 2nd Leg

During the replays Fantasy R16 – Matchday 8 – we can change our captain 3 times, which is a big advantage. That gives us a big chance to get a good captaincy return.

You need to make sure you have a solid captaincy option for each day!

And what is the magic number when you should be satisfied with the return of your captain?

Generally, we consider it to be 6 points. So, when your captain scores 6 points, you keep the armband on him.

But it’s R16 and we can change our captain 3 times. So, we altered our captaincy rule a bit.

We changed our magic captain number to 8 points and decreased it by every playing day.

It means, when your captain scores 8 or more points on the first day (Tuesday), you keep the armband for him. If not, you change it. But then the threshold changes to 7 points on the second playing day (Wednesday).

To recap, the captaincy thresholds for the R16 are:

• 05 Mar (Tue): 8 points
• 06 Mar (Wed): 7 points
• 12 Mar (Tue): 6 points
• 13 Mar (Wed): 5 points

And the captains? Well, we picked these four players as the best captain options for Matchday 8:

• 05 Mar: Harry Kane
• 06 Mar: Haaland
• 12 Mar: Saka
• 13 Mar: Hummels

Read more about our captaincy thresholds: UCL Fantasy Captaincy Thresholds: When to change captain?

7. Odds and Probabilities for Matchday 8

Clean Sheet Odds for R16 2nd Leg

As usual, we converted bookies’ clean sheet odds into clean sheet probabilities using our Odds to probability calculator.

There is a bigger difference in clean sheet odds than we saw in the previous round. So we can make better guesses about clean sheets in Matchday 8.

Manchester City, Arsenal, and Bayern have the highest probability of a clean sheet, so you might aim to get one or two defenders from each of those teams. Bookies also favor Barcelona and Real Madrid to do well defensively.

You can see all Champions League Clean Sheet Odds here.

Goalscoring Odds for Matchday 8

Odds for the first 4 matches are available: Champions League Goalscoring Odds. Unfortunately, bookies do not have odds for next week’s games.

8. Using chips in Matchday 8

The best time to maximally exploit the power of chips was in the group stage. However, if you still have some of your chips left, plan when you use them.

• Use limitless wildcard as soon as possible, while we have many teams and many players to choose from – that way you maximize the chances that you will catch a big haul. The fewer players we have in the game, the lower the points potential is. If you aim to use your limitless chip in Matchday 8, here is our draft for the inspiration: UCL Fantasy Limitless Wildcard Team.
• Regular wildcard – Save it for a Matchday where more than 5 of your players get eliminated, so you cannot cover it with free transfers. You can play the game a bit riskier, and bet on teams who might get eliminated and then get rid of those players with wildcard chip.

9. Team selection for UCL Fantasy Matchday 8

Now, when we mentioned all we wanted, it is time to look at our scout squad. Here is our UCL Fantasy Matchday 8 team selection (squad constructed solely for the round of 16 replays). Kane – Haaland – Saka – Hummels is the captaincy sequence.

10. Fantasy Champions League Tips

Find more tips, strategies, and picks for UCL Fantasy in these articles:

• Beginner? Read our guide: How to play UCL Fantasy?
• Confused about the rules? Read the Official guidelines of the game
• Do you want to get better at UCL Fantasy? Read our article about Essential Tips for UCL Fantasy Success.

Feel free to JOIN our UCL fantasy mini-league for the 2023/24 season using our league code 50U1FM5M03.

Good luck in UCL Fantasy Matchday 8 – Round of 16 2nd Leg.